Tuesday, March 01, 2016

After her visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum last week, you can now listen to Samira Ahmed's programme on the Brontës on BBC Radio 4.

Apparently yesterday, February 29th, was Bachelor's Day, 'the one day every four years where women are encouraged to ask men to marry them' and so The Guardian compiled 'a literary history of women proposing marriage'.

While untraditional in many other ways, Jane Eyre accepts a very traditional first proposal by Mr Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s novel: but by the end Jane makes all the moves, saying plainly that she had “made my proposal [of moving in with him] from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife”. (Moira Redmond)

Despite the renown of writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe or Fanny Fern and two of Woolson’s favorites, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, Woolson seemed to internalize the prevailing prejudice against so-called literary women. As a result, there’s frequently something tepid about her prose, as if she tried to suppress her own passions to fit reigning cultural fashions. (Brenda Wineapple)

Via HottyToddy we have come across yet another quote doing the rounds, supposedly by Charlotte Brontë which is anything but. “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice” wasn't ever penned by Charlotte Brontë and certainly not in Jane Eyre. The quote seems to actually come from the Jane Austen biopic Becoming Jane where it is uttered by Eliza de Feuillide. Vancouver Sun quotes an actual sentence written by Charlotte Brontë. Worcester News tells the story of another pretty clueless man who during WW" met a woman who said her name was Jane Eyre. It didn't occur to him that she was giving him a false name at the time. Noticias de la ciencia (Spain) has an article on TB which mentions Emily Brontë and her creation Cathy. AnneBrontë.org tries to figure out how Anne Brontë's voice would have sounded like. Ya Yeah! Yeah! has a post by Rachel McIntyre on how Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff Influenced her novel The #1 Rule For Girls.